_Composers – Brahms

The Violin is a Wonderful Instrument for Tweaking and Tuning

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

Our review for LSC 2314, with both the Mendelssohn and Prokofiev Violin Concertos, described the wonderful sound we heard on some of the better copies as follows:

As usual for a Living Stereo Heifetz violin concerto recording, he is front and center, with his fingering and every movement of his bow clearly audible, without being hyped-up in the least. (Well, maybe just a bit.)

No violin concerto recording can be considered to have proper Living Stereo sound if the violin isn’t right, and fortunately we found the violin on this copy to be very, very right, with the kind of rosiny texture and immediacy that brings the music to life right in your very own listening room.

Audiophiles who cannot hear what is wrong with the Classic Records repressings of Heifetz’s RCA recordings by the greatest composers who ever lived, including:

may want to seek out a nice — maybe even one that’s not so nice — vintage RCA Shaded Dog of any of his albums, if only to see just how poorly the Classics stack up (with the exception of the LSC 2734, which we have to say, against all odds, is very good).

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Brahms / Sonata in D Minor / Laredo

Hot Stamper Pressings Featuring the Violin Available Now

DEMONSTRATION QUALITY SOUND for this incredibly rare Living Stereo violin record.

This is the first Shaded Dog pressing of LSC 2414 I’ve ever seen. Side one, the Brahms Sonata, has very good sound and is played beautifully. When I dropped the needle on side two I went “Wow!”

The Bach partita for solo violin is incredible sounding. The violin is close-miked and every nuance of the instrument is right there before you. The immediacy of the recording is nothing short of stunning.

To quote from the liner notes, “Jaime calls the Sonatas and Partitas THE most demanding works in the literature. The works lightness and high spirits — the spirit of 17th century dance music — belie its complexity and the enormous technical and interpretive demands it makes of the performer.”

Having this intimate a window onto the piece, I completely agree. It’s a spell-binding work.

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Falla / Ritual Fire Dance – Entremont

More Classical and Orchestral Pressings

  • Philippe Entremont’s delightful 1967 release, here with stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides of this Stereo 360 pressing – just shy of our Shootout Winner
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This wonderful pressing is solid and weighty, with less smear, situated in the bigger space, with more energetic performances
  • These sides are big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present piano and plenty of 3D space around it
  • Some old record collectors (like me) say classical recording quality ain’t what it used to be – here’s all the proof anyone with two working ears and top quality audiophile equipment needs to make the case
  • Dynamic, huge, lively, transparent and natural – with a record this good, your ability to suspend disbelief requires practically no effort at all
  • Here are more than 100 classical and orchestral discoveries we’ve made over the many years we’ve been auditioning records
  • We are happy to share these titles with those whose focus is on the wonderful music and sound they contain, rather than their cost, rarity. collectibility or resale value

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Brahms & Dvorak / Hungarian & Slavonic Dances / Reiner

Hot Stamper Pressings of of the Music of Brahms Available Now

UPDATED in 2022 for CS 6198

The last time we played copies of this London title, CS 6198, we were quite a bit less impressed than the review below might lead you to believe.

We found the sound to be plenty Tubey Magical, but the louder peaks were sour. Overall we judged the sound to be OK at best.

Having played a number of different pressings over the years, our favorite recording of the Slavonic Dances these days is the one with Kertesz on the Decca World of Great Classics budget reissue label.

It may come as a shock to some record collecting audiophiles, but there are actually budget reissues of some titles that can beat any and all comers.

Here are some that we’ve come across, discoveries which we are happy to share with you.

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Mercury Did Not Produce an Especially Good Brahms Symphony No. 2

Hot Stamper Pressings of Mercury Living Presence Records Available Now

The sound of this 1959 Mercury recording (SR 90171) was not impressive.

The sound was decent enough, although somewhat dry and opaque on even the best copies of the record we played. Which makes it a passable sounding record, not much more than that, and not worth doing a shootout for.

It’s best played on an old school stereo that can hide its shortcomings.

The much more revealing systems of today, much like the one we used to audition this very copy, simply make it too easy to recognize its many shortcomings.

Vintage Vinyl

We are not fans of vintage vinyl because we like the sound of old records. Lots of old records don’t sound good to us at all, and we review them by the hundreds on this blog.

We like old records because they have the potential to sound better than any other kind of record, including the ones that have been made and marketed to audiophiles for the last thirty years, especially the ridiculously bad pressings we’ve reviewed more recently.

It Was a Very Good Year

1959 just happens to be one of the truly great years for analog recordings, as can be seen from this amazing group of albums, each of which was recorded or released that year.

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Brahms – 16 Hungarian Dances / Dorati

More of the Music of Brahms

  • Dorati and the LSO’s dynamic performance of these 16 Hungarian Dances debuts on the site with INSANELY GOOD Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound throughout this early Mercury pressing
  • These sides are doing everything right – they’re rich, clear, undistorted, open, spacious, and have depth and transparency to rival the best recordings you may have heard
  • You’d be hard-pressed to find a copy that’s this well balanced, yet so big and lively, with such wonderful clarity in the mids and highs
  • This title is almost always noisy, which is why you will rarely find it for sale on our site

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Brahms / Piano Concerto No. 1 on Speakers Corner Heavy Vinyl

Hot Stamper Classical and Orchestral Imports on Decca & London

UPDATE 2026

This review was written in the 90s, back in the days when we were selling Heavy Vinyl records. We had auditioned it and found it to be one of the better releases from Speakers Corner.

Based upon that very unreliable assessment from many, many decades ago, it might still be one of the better Heavy Vinyl pressings from the label. If you can pick one up for cheap, give it a try and see if we were right that it’s “good.”

Of course, the right London pressing would be a huge step up in sound quality for those who have the means to acquire one.

Our Old Review

One of the best of the Speakers Corner heavy vinyl reissues. As you may know they have gone way downhill lately. Haven’t played this LP in a while but I remember liking it quite a bit back in the day.

As a general rule, this Heavy Vinyl pressing will fall short in some of the following areas when played head to head against the vintage pressings we offer:

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Brahms / Piano Concerto No. 2 / Cliburn / Reiner

More of the Music of Johannes Brahms

  • Van Cliburn’s exceptional performance of Brahm’s Piano Concerto No. 2, here with solid Double Plus (A++) Living Stereo sound or close to it throughout this early Shaded Dog pressing
  • It’s also fairly quiet at Mint Minus Minus, a grade that even our most well-cared-for vintage classical titles have trouble playing at
  • This side one is big, full-bodied, clean and clear, with a wonderfully present and solid piano, and plenty of 3D space around it, and side two is not far behind in all those areas
  • One of the best of the Cliburn recordings – most are not very good, the worst of them being LSC 2252 and the best of them being, probably, LSC 2507 with this one right up there with it
  • We’ve liked LSC 2296 with Rubinstein and Krips in the past, but after doing this shootout we have to say that Cliburn and Reiner set a higher standard for a recording of the work
  • On the right shaded dog pressing, LSC 2581 is yet another Must Own orchestral recording from 1962

Our main listening guy made some notes about the sound of the best pressings he heard. Here is what he wrote:

This LP might be tough for some customers to reproduce. The big peak at the end of track one on side one can have some tube/compressor distortion. Only the fullest, richest copies can properly reproduce this section without the piano and low end getting lost.

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Is the 1s Pressing Always the Best on the Brahms Violin Concerto with Heifetz?

Hot Stamper Pressings that Sound Their Best on the Right Reissue

This early Shaded Dog pressing of the 1958 recording has surprisingly good sound on side two. On the second side the sound opens up and is very sweet, with the violin becoming much more present and clear.

The whole of side two is transparent with an extended top. Usually the earliest Living Stereo titles suffer from a lack of top end extension, but not this one.

Maybe the 1s pressing is also that way. For some reason audiophiles tend to think that the earliest cuttings are the best, but that’s just more mistaken audiophile thinking if our experience can serve as any guide, easily refuted if you’ve played hundreds of these Living Stereo pressings and noted which stampers sound the best and which do not.

The 1s pressings do not consistently win our shootouts.

About half the time, maybe less would be my guess.

Of course, to avoid being biased, the person listening to the record doesn’t know the stamper numbers, and that may help explain why the 1s loses so often.

If you are interested in finding the best sounding pressings, you have to approach the problem scientifically, and that means running record experiments.

Practically everything you read on this blog we learned through experimentation.

When we experimented with the Classic Records pressing of LSC 1903, we were none too pleased with what we heard. Our review is reproduced below.

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None of the Living Stereos with Reiner Conducting Was Better than Passable

Hot Stamper Pressings of Living Stereo Titles Available Now

For a cover this beautifully rendered, you would think the sound of the Shaded Dog pressings of LSC 2219 would be something special.

Unfortunately, as we were preparing our shootout for the work we did not find that to be the case.

We dropped the needle on some copies and judged that the grades would be roughly in the range of 1+. Some copies might be a bit better, some might be a bit worse, but most of them would have sound that was merely passable, even after a good cleaning. (Without a good cleaning, most would probably not even earn that single plus.)

We do not sell records with 1+ grades. You should have no trouble finding those on your own. The world is full of them. They’re what most audiophiles call “good sounding records.”

Our favorite Brahms Second Piano Concerto for sound and performance is LSC 2581. It was recorded for RCA only a few years later in 1962.

The average Shaded Dog may be better than the average classical record, but that certainly doesn’t mean it has any claim to audiophile sound. We’ve played bad early RCA pressings by the hundreds. Now, with the help of this blog, we can point some of them out to the record lovers who are looking for top quality sound and don’t care that much about the label.

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